Interview with Peter-Jan Celis: How Judge.Me Was Born From A Basic Interest in Private Law

Editor’s note: Since writing this article, Judge.ME started to be used by a new .MEr. We look forward to seeing just what they will accomplish! However, you can read our story about a similar .MEr here.

 

Judge.Me is an online system for email arbitration which will provide you with the best arbitrars in your respective field. No more fighting, no more emails claiming that you’re right or your terms weren’t met – let Judge.Me‘s team of legal and tech experts rule the case – it’s easier for everyone, it gets the disputes settled and it will probably save you some money.

Since we were stunned with the fact that there is a legal practice online in the sea of tech-startups, we decided to talk to the founder about it. We got in touch with Peter-Jan Celis, founder of Judge.Me. We got curious on how and why he decided to build an online arbitrary system:

I developed an interest in private law and saw the potential for the internet to deliver it. The idea is that as people will start caring more about their reputation online, enforcement of arbitration awards will happen more and more by ostracism, i.e. warning the community not to do business with people who refused to make the prevailing party whole again. So the long term goal is to build a private law system, but to start I needed a low cost arbitration method to reach as many people as possible. Email arbitration was the obvious way to go because it eliminated as much unnecessary fluff as possible.

Do you keep a track of settled disputes? I’m sure some parties might get displeased with the outcome and decide to go to court?

Our arbitration awards are binding, even if people are displeased with them. If a losing party does not pay a prevailing party, we offer a Notarized Affidavit of Arbitration to the prevailing party so he or she can go to a court and have the arbitral award “recognized and enforced”. This is standard procedure and the end result is as if the court judge ruled exactly as our arbitrator. If the losing party still does not pay at this point, the prevailing party can than seize assets based on that court judgment. Because losing parties often also have to pay for the added court costs of recognition and enforcement, 96% of losing parties pay up without the issue even going to court.

How are people reacting to your clause for using Judge.Me as an arbitrary service? Do you think people are confident enough to leave this matter to an online service?

We are targeting the underserved market of small claims arbitration, so most of our clause users did not use any legal protection before. Our clause users include freelancers, small businesses and individuals buying online and internationally. At this point our service is not well suited for high value claims and we offer custom solutions if presented with claims of above $250K. After making a name in small claims, we certainly aim to move more up market as well.

Have you ever been accused of tampering with awards?

We never had any of our awards challenged nor did any of our awards fail to be recognized and enforced by courts where they were presented.

What made you choose the .Me domain name?

We love how the “judge” in judge.me can both be seen as a noun and and a verb. As a verb, “judge me” is what our clients ask from us, it is the core of our service. As a noun, “judge, me” can be seen as “me as a judge” which will become relevant soon as we are launching public arbitrator profiles soon. We prefer the .me over the .com as it is shorter and the success of about.me gave us confidence it would work marketing wise.

Do you think the Internet will ever surpass physical borders in the world and set a unique law for everybody online?

Absolutely, this is my dream for the long term. In fact, the equity principles we apply in our arbitration are simply the contract law principles that developed in the Lex Mercatoria, the merchant law of the middle ages. This merchant law was the result of merchants settling disputes in a private court system as their trade crossed their local jurisdictions. So our goal is not some radical new system of law, we simply aim to restore pure common law for the modern trade platform called the internet.

If you haven’t already, check out Judge.Me, become an arbitrator or choose them as your online arbitrary service which will protect your rights in your work!